


Tell Me What You Want

by MykaWells



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Season 1 Finale, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 19:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2162619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MykaWells/pseuds/MykaWells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she wakes up after Stahma poisons her in the forest, Kenya is mad as hell. She is also determined to know what it is that Stahma really wants out of this mess they've found themselves in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me What You Want

**Author's Note:**

> I started this thing a few days after the season 1 finale, left it for months, then picked it back up after the most recent episode. I wanted a world where Kenya is well and truly alive, but I also realized that there is no such thing as true fluff for these two, so this canon-compliant-through-end-of-season-one thing happened. It is way darker than I usually go, and not my usual fandom, so I'm honestly a little nervous about posting it.
> 
> Trigger warning: There are references here to Datak's desire to torture Kenya as part of Catithan ritual, though no actual torture. There's also description of the negative physical side effects of Stahma's poison.
> 
> This might be borderline T for some people, but I'm giving it an M rating just to be sure...

Kenya had never felt quite so heavy before. Opening her eyes felt like, well, there was no comparison. She simultaneously felt severely hungover and like she’d been hit by a roller doing at least 40. Everything ached, each hair, every inch of skin _ached_. Had there been light when Kenya opened her eyes, she might have screamed at the overstimulation.

Thank god for small miracles though, because Kenya found that she was lying in a darkened room. She closed her eyes again and lifted a hand to her forehead, but didn’t dare try to sit up just yet. She took as deep a breath as she dared as she tried to remember where she was and how she got here.

It was all so hazy. The last coherent memory she had was of hearing the election results on the radio. Then her memories rapidly devolved into nothing more than flashes of color, smells, sounds and the sharp chill in the air. The memories were there, but they were just on the edge of her consciousness, just out of reach.

Kenya tried to lift her head, but only raised it a few inches off the bed she was resting on before letting it fall back with a groan.

“Yes, it might be wise to stay there.”

Kenya’s eyes snapped open and she turned her head in the direction of the voice.

 _Stahma_. Stahma fucking Tarr.

Because of course it was Stahma. It was always Stahma pulling this sneaky shtako.

It was coming back now, the memory of entering the forest, then the memory of blackness rapidly closing in on Kenya, then her very last memory, which felt more like a bizarre fever dream, of hearing Stahma sing one of her poems, the poems she refused to ever perform for Kenya before that moment, before she poisoned Kenya.

Kenya gritted her teeth, felt her hands shake with all the suppressed rage in her body. It wasn’t suppressed out of choice. Kenya had no other option, because doing what she wanted to do to Stahma in that moment would have caused excruciating pain far beyond anything Kenya would have been capable of inflicting upon Stahma.

Kenya could, however, glare into the darkness in the general direction of Stahma’s voice. Stahma moved out of the shadow to stand at the foot of Kenya’s bed, which as far as alien prison mattresses went, was actually quite comfortable and felt unaccountably clean.

“What,” Kenya started, her voice weak and rough. She paused to swallow, and forced out the next words. “The fuck do you want?”

Stahma smiled in that infuriating way she had when she was amused by Kenya’s humanness. She moved to kneel by Kenya and took a small vile out of one of those hidden pockets the Casti dresses always seemed to have.

“This will make it better,” Stahma said as she bowed her head with that feigned demureness that had always been so transparent to Kenya. “It is what humans would call an anecdote.”

“Antidote,” Kenya replied. Much as it tired her to speak, this would be worth it. Nothing flustered Stahma quite like failing in her attempt to understand human culture.

“What?”

“The word you’re looking for,” Kenya said. “Isn’t anecdote. It’s antidote. Big difference.”

Stahma blinked at Kenya. She swallowed and looked down at the bottle in her hands.

“Would you like it, or not?” Stahma said, her voice cool and sharp. Dangerous.

“Are you kidding? You just poisoned me, Stahma,” Kenya snapped. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, which was white as far as Kenya could tell. “So, no, I’m not going to take a sip from your mystery bottle.”

“Do you realize that what you’re feeling right now will not go away without this?” Stahma said calmly. “It will get worse. You will not die, but you will desperately want me to kill you. Drink it.”

Stahma always spoke so evenly, so controlled, and that infuriated Kenya even more, because she knew Stahma was incredibly passionate and fiery when she allowed herself to be.

Kenya refused to speak and continued staring at the ceiling. She would never allow herself to believe anything that Stahma ever said or did. Kenya had cost a kid his life, Nolan his job, and Amanda the election by believing Stahma capable of honesty.

She’d take her chances with the side effects of whatever poison Stahma had used against her. It couldn’t be much worse than what she felt in that moment.

* * *

 

It could be worse. It could be _a lot_ worse. No more than five minutes after refusing to look at Stahma or her concoction, the pain hit. What Kenya felt before had been an ache, an overwhelming, heavy ache. This was shooting, sharp pain, up her limbs and into her chest. The pain would fade for a few seconds, leaving only a crippling heaviness ten times worse than before. Then it would return with a vengeance. It was like getting out of painfully cold water for a few seconds before being thrown back in over and over again. There was no way to get use to this pain either, to convince her brain that it was normal because it kept changing and moving.

Kenya hated more than anything that Stahma sat there and watched it happen, saw her panting and sweating and doing her best not to scream when her muscles convulsed as the pain rippled through her body.

Stahma remained kneeling by Kenya’s bed in a weirdly maternal posture, like a mom caring for an ill child.

“Just take it, Kenya,” Stahma said. If Kenya had been in her right mind she would have sworn that Stahma was pleading with her. “I know that I have been dishonest, but please believe me when I say I do not wish to make you suffer this pain unnecessarily.”

“I will drink from it if that eases your mind,” Stahma said. She unscrewed the cap, took a spoon from the bedside table and poured the liquid out. “It will have little effect on me because I have not been poisoned.”

Kenya turned her head and watched intently for any sleight of hand that Stahma was undoubtedly capable of. In the dim light of the room, Kenya could still see Stahma clearly as she knelt by Kenya’s bedside; the woman’s white skin nearly glowed in the darkness. Stahma swallowed the syrupy substance without reaction.

Though surprised by the gesture, Kenya refused to let on as much. She glanced down at Stahma’s hand to make sure Stahma had removed her gloves and touched the bottle with her bare hands. She had. Then she snatched the open bottle from Stahma’s hands and examined it. Kenya didn’t want to take anything from Stahma, let alone a drink that might be even more poison. She didn’t have much choice though. Refuse the drink and continue to suffer horrible side effects, or take the drink and possibly suffer horrible side effects.

Speaking of horrible side effects, another spasm of pain, worse than the others, shot up Kenya’s arms and legs, so sharp and sudden that she nearly dropped the bottle. She gripped it tightly and gritted her teeth until the pain passed and her muscles settled back into the persistent, heavy ache.

Kenya turned her head to face Stahma once more. Her gaze pierced Stahma, but those lilac eyes pieced Kenya right back, daring Kenya to do it. In that look, there was something disarmingly honest that Kenya only got flashes of when they were in bed together after one of their encounters.

Kenya put the bottle to her lips and took a sip.

For five whole seconds, nothing happened. Then a disorienting flash of light behind her eyes as a shutter rippled through Kenya’s body. Her muscles seized for a split second before uncoiling, leaving Kenya panting for breath and clutching the bed sheet under her as she braced herself for the next wave of pain. It didn’t come. Instead, Kenya felt a lightness in her arms, legs and head that she’d almost forgotten was possible. It felt so good that it almost hurt, not so different from a really great, full body orgasm.

As the effects of the poison and antidote slipped away, Kenya sat up slowly. The room was actually quite a bit brighter now, still dimly lit, but bright enough to see almost the entire room. She shifted to rest her feet on the floor as she faced Stahma, who was still kneeling by the bed. It was only then that Kenya noticed strange heaviness around her wrists. She looked down at her hands. There were white metallic cuffs around Kenya’s wrist and the cuffs were attached to long, thin metal chains that were attached to the bed. The chains were light enough and long enough that Kenya didn’t feel them pull at her wrists. But they were still there, keeping her from moving more than about two feet away from the bed.

“You’re kidding me,” Kenya said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“The chains are…an unfortunate necessity,” Stahma said

She stood so that she was taller than Kenya, who now sat on the edge of the bed. Stahma strode towards the wall across the room from Kenya’s bed and turned a white knob. The lights brightened just enough to illuminate the whole room. It was a small, bare space, with only the lights along the walls and the bed to adorn the all white room. Because of course everything was white.

“I had to be sure you would not hit me and get away. That would end badly for both of us,” Stahma continued, as if completely disinterested in the proceedings.

“You mean because things have already ended so well already?” Kenya replied.

“That was entirely your doing!” Stahma snapped. She turned sharply and walked back towards Kenya, yanking her up by the arm so that they were as close as eye to eye as they could get. “I _warned_ you not to tell Datak. I foolishly assumed that you would be able to do that, because it is a luxury that a prostitute usually affords her clients.”

The last bit, after Stahma’s outburst was spoken low, low and sharp and so full of malice. She’d aimed to wound, and, as Stahma usually did, she hit her mark. Kenya would have liked to slap Stahma, but didn’t want to give Stahma that satisfaction.

Kenya smiled, the false, cheerful, distant smile she’d perfected in years of serving clients she found repugnant.

“Well,” Kenya said, with that practiced, performative lilt to her voice. “I’ve never had such strong motivation before. When my trust is broken, I tend to respond in kind.”

Stahma looked at Kenya long and hard, her hand still resting on Kenya’s arm. She appeared to be searching Kenya’s face, looking for some crack, some flaw in the performance.

“That is not what this is really about,” Stahma said, tilting her head to the side. “You allowed your emotions, whatever feelings you had for me cloud your judgment.”

“I don’t love you,” Kenya said. She swallowed when she realized that Stahma hadn’t said that at all, but did not otherwise move as she looked directly into Stahma’s unreadable eyes.

“I don’t have feelings for you. You were just a client,” Kenya said firmly, pulling her arm away from Stahma so that she could sit back down on the bed. “But you’re right; it’s not just what you did. I’ve had other clients use me and I never told their wives or husbands.”

Kenya paused, hoping Stahma would say something, anything at all. She didn’t, just kept looking at Kenya, waiting for her to keep talking.

“Because here’s the thing,” Kenya blurted out when the silence and Stahma’s infuriatingly secure mask became too much to bear. “I see you, a strong woman being beaten down by this oppressive male presence, and I hate it. You say you love Datak, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a horrible husband who keeps you from being everything you are capable of. You can love a guy, and he can still be a piece of shtako husband.”

Well, that had been unexpected. She’d meant to say she wanted to humiliate Stahma and Datak at the very same time because they were both despicable creatures. Not what she’d just said, not something so close to the truth.

Stahma’s features softened into some alien imitation of tenderness and pity. She sat on the bed next to Kenya and made a point of looking her directly in the eyes.

“I feel as though we aren’t speaking of Datak anymore?”

“It, it,” Kenya stammered and swallowed, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment before looking directly at Stahma. “It doesn’t matter what happened to me. I just know repression when I see it, and you are always so tightly wound and held together than sometimes I can’t stand it.”

“Your notions of my relationship with Datak are very…human,” Stahma said with the same indulgent amusement she might have directed towards a small, uncomprehending child. It pissed Kenya off more than Stahma’s words had.

“Yes, Stahma, my notions are very human,” Kenya said with forced evenness. “Because I _am_ human. And as much as you like to say things like that as if we’re quaint little sideshow, you love humans. You’re always trying to talk like us, and you’re obsessed with knowing all our stupid little customs. I know for a fact that you love the smell of a human while they’re fucking. When you cheated on your husband, you even decided you would fuck a human prostitute.”

“That was not something I decided to do!” Stahma said as she stood from the bed. She walked halfway across the room before turning back to the bed. When she spoke, it was not with the cool control Kenya had been expecting, but even more intensity.

“Kenya, do you not realize that I meant for none of this to happen? You were nothing but a complication, a stupid mistake I couldn’t stop making, that I never wanted to stop making,” Stahma said.

Kenya stared at Stahma across the room and Stahma stared back. Kenya wasn’t sure who was more surprised by Stahma’s lack of restraint. And, as much as those words should have stung, they didn’t. There was something in Stahma’s voice, something like longing and regret rather than the anger and hatred and bitterness that Kenya expected. That stunned Kenya more than anything else.

After a solid three seconds of piercing silence, Stahma looked down and closed her eyes. When she looked back up, Stahma smiled demurely and kept her eyes and head lowered just enough to avoid direct eye contact. Kenya knew that look, knew how often Stahma deployed that performance, how easily she fell back on it when she felt her emotions slipping out of her control.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Stahma finally said. “Datak is coming soon.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Kenya had vague idea of what she meant, but the shift was so sudden that she needed a minute to wrap her head around it.

“The custom dictates that I poison you with a very specific drug and restrain you,” Stahma said as she took slow, measured steps towards the bed. She bowed her head almost apologetically. “Then I am to tell Datak where you are.”

“Then what?”

“He does as he wishes as a demonstration of dominance,” Stahma said as she stood over Kenya’s bed. She continued calmly, too unnaturally calm to be sincere. “The wronged man then uses very specific methods to cause extreme...discomfort in the one who seduced his wife.”

And it all snapped into place. The chains, the bed, the secluded, likely sound proofed, room. It all made perfect sense, and it made Kenya sick. But Kenya would not allow Stahma to see that.

“So he'll torture me then," Kenya said.

“Kenya, I told you this would end badly if he ever found out. He would have killed us both in the most painful way he could devise if I didn’t follow the Castithan laws. At least this way we both have a chance of surviving,” Stahma said, then added with something resembling sincerity, “I never wanted to do this.”

“What do you want then, Stahma?” Kenya snapped, standing from the bed so that Stahma wasn’t so clearly in the power position. She forced direct eye contact with Stahma because she needed to see something there, needed to shake that mask free.

“How would you like this to end, Stahma?” Kenya continued. “You want to see him make me scream in agony? Will that get you off? Watching him  slowly slice open your shared whore while she’s chained to the bed?”

Stahma flinched and shrunk back a half step from Kenya.

“No,” Stahma said, casting her eyes to the floor. “It is an unfortunate matter of custom.”

“Well, then tell me. For fuck’s sake, Stahma, you owe me at least that much,” Kenya said. “Tell me. What. You. Want.”

And for the first time since waking up, she reached out to touch Stahma, grabbing her by the shoulders. Kenya felt the chains pull tightly at her wrists, but gripped Stahma’s shoulders tighter because something real and honest flashed across Stahma’s face when she did, and Kenya needed desperately to see that again.

“Tell me what you want,” Kenya demanded again.

Stahma looked up, her mask still there, but it wasn’t blank anymore. Her eyes were hard and defiant.

“I want you to learn to keep your mouth shut,” Stahma said as she took another step back, just out of Kenya’s reach.

“What else? Stahma, tell me what you want,” Kenya said, straining to use every bit of slack that the chains allowed. She was pushing, pushing so hard against Stahma’s resistance because she saw the cracks in the mask, the fissures around her lips and eyes as Kenya continued to stare directly, insistently at her.

“Talk to me Stahma!”

That caught her attention, broke some crucial part of Stahma’s resolve. Stahma’s eyes finally met Kenya’s and they were again full of the passion and fire that Kenya had seen earlier.

“What I want? What I want more than anything in this world is to stop wanting you!” Stahma said as she advanced on Kenya. She came so close that Kenya instinctively took a step back. “I want to not be bothered by the fact that I was only ever a client to you!”

Kenya nearly laughed out loud at that. It was just too damn ironic that someone so capable of manipulating people had so drastically misread the situation, that she’d actually believed Kenya when she said that.

Because Stahma clearly did believe it. Despite her earlier claims about Kenya’s feelings clouding her judgment, some part of Stahma believed what Kenya had said in the forest and again in this room. Because there was no way that Stahma could fake the pained look as she repeated Kenya’s words.

“People who are just clients can’t hurt me the way you hurt me, Stahma,” Kenya said sharply as she stepped forward again so that she and Stahma were only inches apart. “Is that what you want to hear? That you’re more important, more capable of hurting me than all the other lonely housewives I sleep with?”

“No, I—

Kenya reached out and kissed Stahma, kissed her hard, and when Stahma leaned into the kiss, opened her mouth to Kenya, Kenya rested both hands on Stahma’s face. Then she pulled away just as abruptly and watched as Stahma tried to catch her breath and rediscover all that anger.

“I don’t kiss clients like that either. Is that what you want to know?”

“Yes,” Stahma said breathlessly.

And Kenya was kissing Stahma all over again, hard and angry and rough, because they could have been great. In radically different circumstances, Kenya and Stahma could have been spectacular. So Kenya kissed Stahma with all that anger at the betrayals and deceit and piss poor timing. With all the emotions surging through her, everything else felt so heightened; the softness of the skin as Kenya dragged her teeth over Stahma’s lower lip, the sharp edges of Stahma’s nails at the back of Kenya’s neck, the cuffs weighing on her wrists, the chains pulling back every time Kenya’s tried to run her hands through Stahma’s hair.

Stahma stepped forward, into Kenya, forcing her to take a step back, then another and another, until Kenya was sitting on the bed. Then Stahma pulled away. She stood over Kenya, and Kenya looked up at Stahma. Without another word, Stahma stuck her hand in one of those Casti pockets, walked over to the head of the bed, and just like that, the cuffs fell away from Kenya’s wrist.

Kenya stood from the bed and walked to Stahma, looked at her for a long second. Stahma actually appeared nervous, as if bracing herself for whatever Kenya might do or say. As much as Stahma deserved everything she was bracing herself for and more, Kenya couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She brought a hand up into Stahma’s hair, leaned in, hesitated, then kissed Stahma, gently this time. Because Kenya knew Stahma and her rigid Casti ways, knew that unlocking the handcuffs constituted a major breach of Castithan law. It was a symbolic gesture, to do something that broke with the orthodoxy that Stahma so often hid behind. It’d been what Stahma, with her bizarre alien world view, would consider a kindness, a major act of trust.

So Kenya kissed Stahma, felt Stahma’s body relax, felt that tension seeping, melting away. This was when Stahma was most honest, Kenya thought. Stahma was most honest when she was kissing Kenya. Whether in bed at the NeedWant or standing in this bizarre little Casti prison room, Stahma could never lie when she was kissing Kenya.

Stahma moved her lips up Kenya’s jaw line to her neck. She pressed one kiss to the base of Kenya’s neck and left her head resting there as she held Kenya. Kenya felt Stahma’s breathe on her skin, could tell that she was inhaling deeply, probably taking in Kenya’s scent. Kenya could feel Stahma’s eyelashes flutter against the skin of her neck as Stahma turned to bury her face into the side of Kenya’s neck.

“I can’t,” Stahma said so softly Kenya barely heard it. She pressed a kiss to Kenya’s cheek and looked at Kenya, her lips parted and trembling. “I can’t do it.”

“You can’t do what?” Kenya asked. She touched Stahma’s cheek tenderly, an instinct, almost a subconscious one, to comfort her.

“Watch him,” Stahma said as she moved Kenya’s hand from her face. “I can’t watch him do it. I thought I could. I use to be capable of that, but I can’t now. I’ve become weak. You have created in me a very human weakness.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Stahma said. She smiled, but her eyes filled with unshed tears. She tucked a strand of hair behind Kenya’s ear. She closed her eyes and gave Kenya a lingering kiss on the forehead.

Stahma took a deep breath as she stepped back from Kenya. After several seconds, she spoke evenly, and with her usual ruthless determination.

“You are going to have to die,” Stahma said.

“What?” Kenya blurted out as she took a step back from Stahma.

Kenya knew that Castithans had their own moral code, but Stahma’s line of reasoning was beyond bizarre. She didn’t want to see Kenya get hurt so she was going to kill her?

“As far as Datak is concerned, if he is unable to follow through with the ritual, you must already be dead,” Stahma said. “So I will make sure he believes you have been killed by the poison. It will have been an accidental overdose because you’re a smaller human than most who are given this particular substance. It would be very unusual, but not outside of the realm of possibility.”

“Then what? Don’t you think he might ask for a body?”

“I will tell him I left you in a place where the Hellbugs would devour your body,” Stahma said. “That will please him because it leaves no evidence to tie him to the crime.”

Kenya tried not to think too hard about the fact that Stahma had so quickly, so easily thought up a hypothetical way to dispose of Kenya’s hypothetically dead body. Instead, she focused on the very real flaw in Stahma’s plan.

“Stahma, I think you’re missing the huge part where I’m not actually dead,” Kenya said. “Where am I suppose to go? What am I suppose to do?”

“My offer to help you escape in the forest was not entirely dishonest,” Stahma said. “I was half hoping you might take it so we would not have to come to this. I have a fully stocked roller ready and waiting for you just over the ridge. I can’t go, could never actually leave Defiance, but you can.”

“But my sister,” Kenya said. “I can’t leave her behind. I can’t let her think I’m dead Stahma.”

“You will have to,” Stahma said reasonably, as if faking your own death was absolutely the sanest course of action a person could take. “Everyone must believe you have vanished.”

“I can’t, Stahma,” Kenya said. “It would destroy Amanda. I can’t do that to her.”

“What if,” Stahma said, smiling as the idea came to her. “She was to get an anonymous note a week after your disappearance? One disclosing your location with a warning that she not tell anybody where you are or that you are alive. She can follow you, but telling anyone else would put you both in grave danger. Datak will be too concerned with being mayor to wonder why the former mayor left town.”

That all sounded alright, with the exception of one potentially huge problem: Nolan. Knowing Nolan’s persistence and his skill at tracking everything and anything, Kenya could see that plan backfiring spectacularly. He would either attempt to track Kenya, or track Amanda right to her. Either way, he could find her, things could escalate quickly and in any number of ways, and she, Stahma, possibly even Amanda would end up in serious danger.

“I am sure I would be able to convince Nolan that Amanda needs some space and time to mourn her sister, needs to get out of the town that has her sister’s fingerprints all over it,” Stahma said, as if she took had thought of the same complication. “Not directly, of course. I have my ways of convincing those around him, people who will, in turn, convince him.”

That part of the plan Kenya certainly didn’t doubt. She didn’t know what Stahma’s methods were, or who she could possibly exercise that level of influence on, but Kenya had no doubt that Stahma could convince just about anyone of just about anything.

Kenya sat down on the bed as she rested her head in her hands and sighed. When she’d woken up this morning, Kenya never expected that she would be working with Stahma Tarr, let alone trusting Stahma Tarr with her life.

She couldn’t see any other way though. Datak would be here. He would be here soon, and do all kinds of horrible things to her while Stahma was forced to watch. Then he might very well kill her afterwards. Or give her a massive dose of Indogene drugs that would wipe her memory clean before leaving her out in the middle of the Badlands. Kenya could imagine a thousand different ways that it would end, and none of them were happy or painless.

Stahma sat on the bed next to Kenya.

“As you know, Datak keeps some rather unsavory company,” Stahma said. “Perhaps he will accidently dishonor one of them and find himself in Reyetso’s embrace sooner than he expects. If he does, you would be free to return.”

Kenya looked up at Stahma, who had her head tilted down as she smiled that demure smile. The smile was meant to hide, but this time it gave Stahma away. Kenya knew what Stahma was trying to say, what Stahma was suggesting she could do. Kenya understood completely, and half wished that she didn’t, half wish Stahma wouldn’t tempt her with such an offer.

“I’m. we have no control over that,” Kenya said. “We _shouldn’t_ have any control over that.”

Stahma bowed her head.

“I understand this is a big decision, but you must decide soon,” Stahma said as she took Kenya’s hand. “Because Datak will arrive, and the decision will be made for you.”

Kenya closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. Stahma squeezed her hand.

“Alright,” Kenya said finally as she stood from the bed. “I’ll go.”

Stahma stood too and smiled at Kenya. It was one of the most human smiles Kenya had ever seen on her. She leaned in and kissed Kenya tenderly. When she stepped back, it was with the same smile, but a new softness in her eyes.

“We better get to the roller,” Stahma said.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I mean, at least it's not a totally gut wrenching end, right? Kenya's going to be alive out there somewhere, and that was my main goal. I just needed to find a way to get her there, and the only paths I could see wound straight through angst-ville. 
> 
> I'm leaving it open on the off chance that I decide to return to the fic, because this not entirely healthy relationship really does fascinate me. Thanks for reading!


End file.
